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Elizabeth Bay House

Built at 'very considerable expense', Elizabeth Bay House was once the finest house in the colony, set within a garden of the most remarkable extravagance and fancy. Yet it tells a familiar Sydney story: of ambition and passion over-stretched, of riches to ruin.

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Built at 'very considerable expense', Elizabeth Bay House was once the finest house in the colony, set within a garden of the most remarkable extravagance and fancy. Yet it tells a familiar Sydney story: of ambition and passion over-stretched, of riches to ruin.

Elizabeth Bay House.

With commanding views over Sydney Harbour, Elizabeth Bay House gleams like a Greek temple. Once surrounded by famous landscaped gardens, it is one of the most splendid private houses ever built in Australia and still arouses our delight and astonishment. Its elegant rooms and fine proportions, sweeping staircase and lavish furnishings reveal the tastes and aspirations of its original owner, Alexander Macleay, after the governor, the most important public official in colonial Sydney. But it was his magnificent gardens which most keenly expressed his tastes and passions, and in the economic downturn of the 1840s pushed him towards ruin. Elizabeth Bay House is an iconic Sydney home, with an iconic Sydney back-story of obsession for property and position stretched beyond means and undone by changing financial times.

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Historic Houses Trust of NSW, incorporating Sydney Living Museums, cares for significant historic places, buildings, landscapes and collections. It is a statutory authority of, and principally funded by, the New South Wales Government.